Starting Vehicle Construction Question

When you want to start creating vehicles, should start scripting first, or is it better to finish construction first then script it? And are there any tutorials on creating your first vehicle? Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

On a purely personal basis, I like to do the basic geometry in plywood and then chrome to get the shape and the joins right, then script it, testing along the way to see if any geometry changes are needed.

Good place for info (and I think it has a small vehicle section) is the Ivory Tower Of Primitives in Natoma, I think it is...

I tend to script the basic functionality in a plain wooden cube, just to get a rough outline, then build the model and add the script, then tweak.

Thank you for the replies. The Ivory tower is a great place for learning building technique, and they do mention vehicle construction in one of the lessons.

I generally build the model first, then script it. For me, there's no point scripting something if it's not going to look good in the end.

* builds first, scripts later.

As long as you know you will have/can have a working script for it, build first. The only time I script first is if the idea is crazed and I don't wanna spend forever building something that won't work.

I build it first, using solid-color textures. I then drop in a script from my collection that approximates the behavior I want, and spend a few days fine-tuning it. Then I texture it, set the permissions, and make sure when it's sold it behaves properly.

...and if your going to be driving it mainly on the yuky sucky prim roads do your testing on that, not on land because it handles differently.

Building a vehicle for me is a matter of a few hours work, and I find it very enjoyable. Scripting for me is a laborious practice that I still enjoy, but I do a ton of tweeking to get the features and handling characteristics I'm after.

In the end, while I will use a plain, plywood cube at times for basic testing of a script, I find it a lot more inspiring to ride around in my sleek (or clunky) final model. It lets me see what I'm aiming for. Especially since I often put features into various prims in the set (opening doors, propellers and the like).

Since the positioning and camera view of the avatar is also very important, I like to be able to use the 'final' vehicle to get those things nailed down.

The Ivory Tower in Noyo only contains minimal information about vehicles at this point. I plan to include a lot more either in Noyo or Natoma over time, but right now I'm involved in so many projects that they're keeping me away from work on the tower. I'm learning a lot, which will eventually go back into the tower, but these things are taking me longer than I expected.

I need to clear off my SecondLife plate, you know?

Good luck with the vehicles, Trevor!

Lumi